Here are five reasons why Halo is a great game:

1. Weapon balance - every weapon in the game is useful, and none are overpowered. Every weapon has at least one advantage, and one disadvantage. The pistol is accurate at long range, which gives it an advantage over the assault rifle, which is lethal, but only at a short range. The plasma rifle is good for taking down shields, but can't hold much ammo, and the rocket launcher is very powerful, but also slow to reload. You can only carry two weapons, but you will frequently find yourself changing them out for various situations. The fact that all of them are useful gives you all sorts of ways to fight differently.

2. Fantastic AI. The aliens in the game (called "The Covenant") give you some very smart enemies to fight. They will use cover to let their shields regenerate and if you are trying to run them over in a vehicle, they will dive out of the way. They will also use grenades sometimes to flush you out, as well as try to rush you and/or outflank you. Sometimes they will jump onto nearby turrets or vehicles. Not only do the enemies have great AI, but so do your marine teammates. This all makes for some very exciting battles, which never quite play out the same twice.

3. The game actually makes you use your skills and tactics, instead of memorizing where enemies are scripted to ambush you. I love this aspect. There are very few surprises in Halo. Winning battles requires skillful use of cover, smart weapon selection, and good use of grenades too. I am kind of spoiled now, because every other first-person shooter (except for maybe Serious Sam) seems inferior in this area. Most games require you to abuse the "quick save" key in order to get through the game.

4. In Halo, you are always moving forward. The game just flows so fast. This is due in large part to the regenerating shields mechanic, which is being copied by lots of other games. This simple innovation means that you can fight 15 or 20 battles without losing any health, as long as you are smart when you fight them. Thus, you don't have to backtrack all afternoon for a powerup. In addition, the game throws lots of ammo your way, so you don't have to spend much time scavenging for it.

5. Halo has vehicles and turrets seamlessly integrated into the game. There are vehicles scattered throughout the game that you can get into and use to mow down your enemies or fly around and blast them from the sky. When you get into the jeep, marine squadmates will jump in with you and take the gunner positions. The vehicles in this game are so much fun. Sometimes the best way to defeat a group of enemies is to drive around the perimeter and let your gunner blast away at them.

6. Surprise, surprise, grenades are not only useful, but crucial to surviving the game. This is thanks to a separate hotkey just for throwing grenades. You can be firing your assault rifle and throw a quick grenade, and then fire your rifle some more. You don't have to switch weapons to throw grenades, so they become that much more useful. This is another very simple innovation that substantially changes the gameplay.

OK I lied, that was 6 reasons. There are actually more, like the wonderful soundtrack, which makes the game's big battles so memorable. Lots of people dislike Halo's repetitiveness, especially towards the end. The infamous "Library" level gets pretty boring, but this is still really a great game despite being two years old and having some technical problems.

Halo is loosely based off of several Sci-Fi movies from Aliens to Star Wars. The story begins at Reach, one of the worlds that humans have colonized. Reach is suddenly attacked by the covenant and your ship is forced to make a blind jump to lure your enemies away from Reach so that they do not discover the location of Earth. Your ship arrives at Halo but the covenant has somehow tracked you and follow closely behind. The covenant armada attacks your ship and you are forced to crash land on Halo, an ancient and mysterious ring world where the covenant horde attacks you at every turn. The covenant is made up of several alien races who find humans to be an affront to their gods. Their blind devotion to these gods has incited their leaders to declare a holy war against humanity with the ultimate goal of killing every human being. After several breathtaking missions and just when you think you have the covenant on the run, a new, more vicious foe appears. The Flood as they are known, are nothing more than human and covenant soldiers who have been infected by a mysterious disease that has but one purpose, to infect the entire galaxy. In an attempt to stop the Flood, the main character of Halo, the Master Chief attempts to activate Halo's weapon systems but his AI sidekick Cortana discovers the horrifying truth about Halo's true purpose.

Halo is quite simply the finest video game ever made. The story behind the game is phenomenal, the characters in this game range from the Master Chief, an experimental warrior with cybernetic enhancements to Cortana, his AI partner to the comic relief of the covenant foot soldiers known as grunts. The maps in this game are incredible with realistic natural effects that are stunning to behold. All of these elements are welded together to form the best video game experience of all time.

First, to all the folks saying things like "it shouldn't be like this with my video card" and "not for a 2 year old game" and other such things (in regards to video performance): hate to burst your bubble, but welcome to the future of gaming! I would direct your attention to Anandtech.com and their last review of all the latest graphics cards running 15 of the latest and upcoming games. Guess what? The days of 160FPS in Unreal Tournament are over. The fastest card available, the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB, only gets an AVERAGE framerate of 43 in Halo. And not just Halo. Halo, Jedi Academy, Final Fantasy XI, Half Life 2, Doom 3 -- all the most anticipated games of the year -- are DirectX 9.0 games. And the very latest hardware can only run any of these games in the ranges of 30 to 60 FPS, average. Sometimes you'll only get 20 frames. Yes, even with a Radeon 9700 or 9800. The 9800 Pro 256MB only averages 19.9 in Final Fantasy XI! Its not the game producer's fault, nor does it mean that a game sucks. It means that your hardware sucks in comparison to what it could be. Nothing personal. Your self-image shouldn't be wrapped up in what video card you bought and installed. But game hardware is obviously going to need to advance more still in order to keep up with software requirements. I personally think that you should blame both ATI and Nvidia for doing a poor job of actually getting the market ready for DX9. (One tip: Halo doesn't support Anti-Aliasing yet -- not many DX9 games do -- so make sure your drivers are set to "Application Preference" so that the card doesn't try to set AA. That will really bog things down.)

Also, although the core of the game is 2 years old, it was completely recoded from the equivalent of a DirectX 8 game (on Xbox) to a DirectX 9 game. So in terms of coding, its brand new. Much newer, in fact, than even Unreal 2 or Unreal Tournament 2003 (both Direct X 8.1 games).

Also, keep in mind that there is a lot of controversy over Nvidia graphics cards and their performance in DirectX 9 games. They optimized their drivers for benchmark performance, but they don't actually "fully" support DirectX 9. As a result, you get less than anticipated performance in any DirectX 9 game, of which Halo is one. Yes, even a 5600 or a 5900 Ultra. Sorry. Don't kill the messenger. (Again, I recommend you peruse Anandtech.com for much more detail on this). I wouldn't be surprised if most of those reporting poor performance here are using newer Nvidia cards.

As for Halo itself, its simply wonderful! It truly is visually incredible. I'm using a Radeon 9500 Pro and a Pentium 4 2.4C at 1024x768, everything set to high. I personally have only had minor performance problems during very large combat scenes (30+ characters, lots of fire, lots of decals (blood), and lots of sky and ground textures). Be sure you update to the latest driveres for your video card.

The gameplay is pretty much perfect. Better than anything else out there. Someone finally made a PC game where you don't have to switch to grenades in order to use them! And you get lots of them (so use them liberally). The weapons are diverse, but there are none (with the exception of the perennial favorite rocket launcher) that is clearly more powerful or useful than any other, which keeps the gameplay balanced. And the bot AI is awesome. Some of the Covenant foes are really clever. Some are really not. The little ones (forget their names) are hysterical. "He'll kill us all!" "Down in front!" "Run for your lives!" I find myself (morbidly) laughing out loud in the middle of major battle scenes.

Multiplayer is really fun and reminds of my days playing Team Fortress Challenge. I dig it. But you HAVE to download the update before you can play in multiplayer. Otherwise performance will [smell] or multiplayer will crash repeatedly.

In the final analysis, this game really is ahead of its time. You can't blame the game or Microsoft, no matter how much you want to, if your hardware can't keep up. Blame the hardware manufacturer. Send them a letter and tell them that you demand better. And if your able, definitely consider upgrading to a Radeon 9500, 9600, or 9700 card. They all perform well in this and other new games, and are all under $...now. The investment will be worth it if you want to play any new games this year.

I have read on the box that it requires a minimum of 733Mhz to run, that may be a bit optimistic. I would say nothing short of maybe a 1.3 or 1.5Ghz and lots of RAM, at least 256 megs. I have a 2.4Ghz Pentium with 768 Megs of RAM and it runs super smoothly with no lag for load time while game scenery changes.